Sacred

Raven Barber scored 15 points to lead host Mount St. Mary's men's basketball team to a 64-52 victory over Sacred Heart on Thursday night. The Mountaineers (6-14, 3-6 Northeast Conference) used an 18-2 run in the second half to pull away and win for the first time in three games. Sacred Heart (12-8, 5-4) led 42-39, but Mount St. Mary's quickly took control, scoring nine consecutive points for a 48-42 lead with 8:34 remaining. The Mountaineers then went on their second 9-0 run, going ahead 57-44 on Barber's layup with 5:32 to play.

On November 15, 2009, RICHARD A. YATES; devoted husband of Tanya Yates. Friends may visit the FAMILY OWNED MARCH FUNERAL HOME WEST, INC., 4300 Wabash Avenue, on Friday after 8:30 AM where the family will receive friends from 5 to 8 PM. The family will also receive friends on Saturday at the Sacred Zion Full Gospel Baptist Church, 346 N. Denison Street, at 9:30 AM followed by funeral service at 10 AM.

Both Mayor Sheila Dixon and Gov. Martin O'Malley made a stir last week for acknowledging the inevitable: Despite their efforts to avoid it, the depth of the budget crisis facing the city and the state will force cuts to the most sacred of public priorities: firefighters, police and teachers. Ms. Dixon is in the midst of negotiations with the police and fire unions to trim their budgets for the current fiscal year by $8 million, part of her effort to make $60 million in cuts citywide. And Mr. O'Malley told superintendents at a meeting this week to start scouring their budgets for savings, noting that "virtually every other aspect of state government has been cut."

Go see Doug Stanhope at the Ottobar on Friday night, and chances are you'll be angered, outraged, maybe even ticked off beyond all sense of reason. With luck, you'll laugh, too. He is, after all, the comic whose profile in a 2006 issue of British GQ was headlined, "Is This America's Most Depraved Man?" As a comic, he's following in the footsteps of such angry young men as Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks and Lewis Black, ignoring conventions of good taste, cracking jokes about things both hallowed and profane, never meeting a sacred cow he didn't want to gore.

If hot cross buns, as essential to Easter eating as colored eggs and chocolate bunnies, can survive a ban by England's Protestant Queen Elizabeth I, they can survive the diminishing treatment of mass production and become one of your holiday homemade triumphs. It's easy. Just ask cookbook author Nancy Baggett of Ellicott City. "If you know what not to worry about," says Baggett, whose new book is Kneadlessly Simple, a bread cookbook for the yeast-phobic, "you don't have to worry at all."

Mount St. Mary's used a balanced scoring attack to defeat Sacred Heart last night in the semifinals of the Northeast Conference tournament in Emmittsburg. Kelly Beidler led the Mount (19-12), seeded second, with 13 points and had five rebounds and three steals. Jeremy Goode, who missed much of the second half because of foul trouble, scored all 12 of his points in the first half. Shawn Atupem added 12 points and Will Holland 11. The Pioneers (17-14) were within 53-52 before the Mount went on a 10-2 run to push its advantage to 63-54 with 4:38 left.

TEL AVIV, Israel -There was a map of the Holy Land on the front flap of my mother's Bible. It was colored in pale pinks and blues and it showed Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Galilee and the Jordan River. The names told the story of the life of Jesus Christ, but to me the map made it real. Older now, I have graduated from dreaming over maps to visiting places embedded in my consciousness, above all Israel. It is just a sliver of land about the size of New Jersey but deep in terms of time. I had only a week to devote to the trip, so I had to be selective.

Of the many causes of our economic crisis, few were as damaging as the securitization of home mortgages. But there's another culprit - a tax benefit so popular with Americans that politicians question it at their peril. First, let's examine the securitization issue. Large investors believed that the American housing market was a solid, low-risk way to invest billions of dollars. Corporate stocks might return more, but with greater risk; bonds might be less risky, but with less return. They thought mortgage-backed securities offered the ideal mix of strong returns with low risk.

Jay Greene scored 17 points and Darryl Proctor added 14 points and 14 rebounds as host UMBC beat Hartford, 69-60, last night. Matt Spadafora had 15 points and six assists, while Chauncey Gilliam and Rich Flemming each scored 10 points for the Retrievers (8-8, 2-2 America East Conference). Greene hit a season-high five three-pointers for UMBC, which won despite going 12-for-20 from the free-throw line. MOUNT ST. MARY'S 78, SACRED HEART 67:: The backcourt combination of Jeremy Goode and Jean Cajou combined for 47 points to lead the Mount (9-9, 4-3 Northeast Conference)

Sister Janet Seubott, a member of the Religious Sisters of Mercy who had been principal for nearly two decades of the Shrine of the Sacred Heart Parochial School in Mount Washington, died of cancer Sunday at The Villa, her order's retirement home in the Woodbrook section of Baltimore County. She was 70. Janet Margaret Seubott was born in Baltimore and raised in West Baltimore, where she had been a member of St. Bernardine Roman Catholic Church. After graduating from Mount St. Agnes High School in 1956, she entered the Religious Sisters of Mercy and professed her vows in 1959.